MONTREAL, QC --(Marketwired - October 29, 2016) - Quebec's private secondary schools far outperformed the province's public schools, but some public schools are improving, according to the Fraser Institute's annual school ranking released today.

Of the province's top 100 best performing secondary schools, 86 are private schools despite private schools comprising less than 30 per cent of all secondary schools in the province.

But some public schools have shown they can equal or even surpass private school results. Le Tandem, a public school in Victoriaville, has an average overall rating of 8.3 out of 10 over the last five years. By comparison, a Victoriaville private school, Collège Clarétain, achieved an average score of 8.0.

And Le Boisé, another public school in Victoriaville -- where the average income for households with children is below the provincial average -- is improving quickly even though 32 per cent of its students have special needs.

"Year after year, the report card shows that strong academic performance and improvement is possible at any school regardless of its affiliation or the socio-economic status of its community," said Peter Cowley, the Fraser Institute's director of school performance studies.

It finds that 44 secondary schools in the province -- 34 of them public -- have improved their performance over the past five years. The fastest improving public school is Antoine-Roy in Gaspé, which improved its score from 2.5 out of 10 in 2011 to 6.1 in 2015.

However, there are also 35 schools in Quebec that experienced declining performance, with Séminaire Marie-Reine-du-Clergé, a private school in Lac-St-Jean, showing the fastest decline from 8 out of 10 in 2011 to 4.4 in 2015.

"No type of school has a monopoly on improvement, but where schools are not improving, or worse declining, parents should ask why," Cowley said.

The report card also found female students performed better than males in all three of the different math courses in both English and French. Girls in French schools averaged 70.9% on their exams while boys averaged only 68.2%. In the English sector, girls averaged 66.3% on the three exams while boys achieved 64.3%.

In fact, girls achieved higher math scores than boys in 72 per cent of the schools ranked in the report.

The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute's independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org